Sewage Spill Under Inquiry

HOLLYWOOD -- Environmental officials have launched an investigation to determine what caused a 2,000-gallon sewage spill late Tuesday at the city`s regional waste-water treatment plant.

The inquiry came on Wednesday as city officials and state environmental authorities discussed a ban on new development in most of south Broward County that was instituted because the plant was treating too much sewage.

Officials from Hollywood`s utilities department met in West Palm Beach with the state Department of Environmental Regulation in an all-day, closed- door session that ended with the county-imposed moratorium still in place, a county official said.

``Nothing has changed,`` said Mira Barer, director of the county`s Office of Natural Resource Protection.

The moratorium also affects five other cities -- Pembroke Pines, Pembroke Park, Hallandale, Miramar and Dania -- that contract to treat their sewage with Hollywood.

Barer issued the moratorium on Dec. 2 after determining that Hollywood`s treatment plant was processing 1.3 million gallons more raw sewage each day than it is licensed to process.

The problems she cited at the plant, however, were not aggravated by Tuesday`s sewage spill, officials said. Hollywood has the capacity to handle additional sewage, but it is licensed to handle only 38 million gallons of sewage a day.

``The spill happened because we lost oxygen pressure for an hour on Tuesday (at a portion of the plant),`` said Tim McVeigh, Hollywood`s acting waste-water systems manager. ``When that happens, (the plant) gets stressed and the waste begins to foam up and spill out.``

Douglas Knapp, a plant operator with the Office of Natural Resource Protection, said the investigation of the spill was necessary because it was discovered that someone purposely broke a soil berm that surrounds the treatment plant grounds at the mouth of the canal, where about 100 gallons of the sewage seeped.

Hollywood must show state and county officials that it can recycle volumes of waste water that exceed the 38 million-gallon maximum allowed by the state before the ban on new construction can be lifted.